Lots of our customers use their Olark box to help visitors and make sales. Which is quite awesome! But some have come up with creative, innovative and thoughtful ways to Olark and bring new uses to the features we offer.
OLARK FOR EDUCATION
Paul Hibbitts is a consultant and a User Experience Design instructor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia (the best place in the world). He's begun using Olark to help his students right on his own course site--in essence, creating virtual office hours right in his chat box. Comments have included, "Chat is no doubt one of the best features of the companion site!"
TALK TO SHY CUSTOMERS
Jeff Pio of Farms Technology, LLC (a division of Pioneer Seed, a DuPont Company) says,
"We develop mobile & web applications for Farmers allowing them to sell grain (corn, soybeans, wheat) through our online trading platform. In addition, we develop & work on solutions for the agriculture industry. Olark has helped us take our support to farmers to the next level in communicating how to sell grain through our online trading platform. The range of comfort our customers have, when simply navigating around --or- making decision to sell grain, differ between every phone call or chat.
Many of our customers tend to be introverts, so the ability to do a simple chat response for those that need a quick reminder of how to access a feature is perfect. They get an on-demand response without the feeling of additional pressure of talking to someone over the phone. Cobrowsing has been something newly implemented with our team. It has worked out great for new customers that may need a reaffirmation that their 'clicks' are in the correct direction."
MAKE IT EASY WITH THE API
Michael Geneles of Pitchbox.com shared,
"We have Olark integrated within our application interface so our customers can start a live chat or contact us when we are offline directly from their dashboard. We push all the pertinent customer information to Olark via the Olark Javascript API. This insures that our customers do not have to fill in any data when they contact us. Then, we have Olark send all chat transcripts and contact messages to HelpScout (our help desk software) and create support tickets for customer interactions.
In addition, we use the awesome Targeted Chat feature in Olark to automatically route new visitors to Sales or Support teams based on URLs. Love it."
GUIDE CUSTOMERS IN-APP
Sunny Okoro of www.shootmyvideos.com writes,
"We have a School Management System and I integrated it into the app. It was used to give students who are having challenges using the app real time assistance on how to get through. This has been a huge success and I intend using it in all the apps I develop."
CREATIVE MARKETING STRATEGIES
Fernando González from Floqq.com the biggest marketplace for online video courses in Latin America, says,
"We use Olark and we are pretty happy with your service, you rock! We use Olark sometimes to give our users some gifts. For example, I decided to give a photoshop course to all our users if they contacted us though Olark from 4pm to 6pm. So i changed the Olark box's header and I put a mystery phrase, such as, 'Don't open me or I'll have to give u a present......'
We are hosting a webinar event on February 12th. Part of the registration process involves not only signing up for the webinar but also submitting questions via Google Moderator. Google Moderator does not have the best UI so we have a custom chat message that pops up on the registration page offering people assistance with using the Google Moderator tool. This has helped us get more engagement and reduce bounce rate.
Another way we do it is promoting these little campaigns through our social networks. We tell our users to chat with us on Olark during an specific day/hour and they'll get a present. When they write us we give them a discount to take one of our courses for free.
The results are pretty good. I think it is a fun way to get engagement and the user experience is the best! At least, that's what they tell us!"
CUSTOMERS IN OTHER LANGUAGES
Bertie Clayton from UK design firm and shop Jane Clayton & Company told us,
"It's been particularly useful opening up new markets where customers have good written English but are not confident in speaking on the phone."
Have you come up with a novel way to use Olark? Tell us about it!
You may be featured in an upcoming article or even get one of our coveted Olark T-shirts!
